Costco Stock tracker

This will track the stock of a item on a Costco Website and will send an email alert if the specified item is in-stock or an error occurs.

disclamer: These instructions are for macOS

Getting Started

Clone the repository

Open your terminal

Navigate to certain directories(folders)

    cd /path/to/file

clone the repository using

    git clone https://github.com/benWu26/tracker.git

install git if needed

check if successfully cloned by running

    ls

and you should see the file contents in your repo

Install Python

Make sure you have python installed

Run these commands in your terminal:

    python3 --version

or

    python --version

Install python here: https://www.python.org/downloads/

Note: if python3 works use python3 for the rest of the commands

create virtual environment

run this in the terminal of the directory of the project:

    python -m venv myenv
    source myenv/bin/activate

Install Dependencies

run this in the terminal of the directory of the project:

    pip install -r requirements.txt

update the script

    vim tracker.py

Then use the arrow keys to navigate the file and then type in i to start to edit the file.

To then just change the 'msg','recipients', and 'link' in the file

Then click esc and type :wq

create the .env file

    touch .env

then copy the file that I would have sent and copy it to the file

    vim .env

click i, then copy, and then quit using esc then :wq

try the script

run this in the terminal:

    python tracker.py

Deactivate the virtual environment

    deactivate

Automation of the script

We will automate this script using a crontab.

First make the python file executable

    chmod +x tracker.py

Then we will add the script to the crontab

    crontab -e

then add

"0 * * * * /path/to/script"

replacing the path to script with the path to tracker.py script, placing the 0 there means that every hour (0th minute) the script will be run

use vim instructions for the crontab editor

then to verify the script is there,

    crontab -l

You should then see your task listed there

removal

if you ever want to remove the script simply, delete it from the crontab